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CAN blames corruption on national foes
• As Independence anniversary rounds off
LERE OJEDOKUN & ERASMUS ALANEME, Abuja
WORK resumes
all over the country this morning as activities marking Nigeria’s 44th
Independence Anniversary were rounded off yesterday.
In Abuja, there was an
inter-denominational service attended by President Olusegun Obasanjo and Senate
President, Chief Adolphus Wabara.
At the service held at the First Baptist
Church, Garki II, Abuja, leaders were charged to re-examine themselves and
identify how they had contributed to the nation’s stagnation and calamity.
Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN)
under which auspices the service was conducted, blamed corruption for national
woes while tasking everyone to embrace a new code of conduct, morality and
belief.
In a sermon, CAN chairman for the Federal
Capital Territory (FCT), Rev. Williams Okoye, quoting from Ezekiel 22:23-11,
admonished that all forms of profanities and excesses be curtailed.
He condemned oppression of the poor by the
bourgeois, warning that the wrath of God dangled on whoever was unrepentant of
his or her ways.
"The people of the land have used
oppression and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor, the needy, yea, they
have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them, that
should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I
should not destroy it: but I found none. Therefore have I poured out mine
indignation upon them", he stated.
Rev. Okoye who stood in for CAN president,
Dr. Peter Akinola, however, expressed hope that the country could attain
progress and prosperity if the citizens would obey God’s commandments and love
righteousness.
"Nigeria will change when we individually
change. The root of Nigeria’s problem is corruption emanating from corrupt
individuals. We should have a redefinition of the nation’s morality, code of
conduct and belief. Righteousness exalts a nation. Make the fear of God and
righteousness the foundation of nationhood", he counselled.
Commending government’s efforts at
national rebirth, he called on Nigerians to support the administration in moving
the country forward.
Chief Wabara read the first lesson taken
from Ezekiel 22: 23-31 while President Obasanjo took the second drawn from 1
Timothy 2: 1-8.
Another highpoint of the service was
prayer and intercession for the continued peaceful co-existence of the country
as well as healing for national economy.
The service was attended by ministers,
service chiefs, judges, senators, members of the House of Representatives as
well as captains of industry.
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